The tall, thin man was happy to explain. ‘I shall take this sample to the lab and compare it with those from the lavatory floor. If – as I strongly suspect – the specimens prove to have come from the same head, well, all your troubles will be over.’
‘Thank God!’ said Inspector Horton with a great sigh of relief.
‘Personally,’ – the tall, thin man began descending the stairs – ‘I should jump the gun. There can’t be two victims of chronic dandruff walking around in the same case.’ He reached the bottom of the stairs and turned back for a brief moment. ‘Pity it wasn’t one of the kidnappers, come to think of it,’ he called. ‘I’d have liked to present the evidence connecting him with the crime in court. It might have made the Guinness Book of Records!’
Dover was not notably thin-skinned but even he had found this little scene faintly embarrassing. In a brooding silence he went through the motions of inspecting the top floor of the house, paying special, if unobtrusive, attention to the small, windowless toilet in which he had spent so many, not entirely unhappy hours. Finally he caught MacGregor’s eye and nodded.
‘You really recognise it, sir?’ asked MacGregor, who knew of Dover’s propensity for taking the easy way out. After all, if the idle old bastard claimed to recognise this house, he wouldn’t have to drag around looking at others.
‘It even smells the same,’ grunted Dover. He had never mentioned anything about smells before, but MacGregor was pretty fed up himself and didn’t pursue the matter.
Rut (albeit unwittingly) Dover had made Inspector Horton’s day. That worthy man let out the breath he had been holding and thankfully uncrossed his fingers. His professional career and the future of no less than six little Hortons was now assured. But the inspector was not one for resting on his laurels. With a crash that all but scared the living daylights out of Dover, Inspector Horton leapt for the window at the top of the stairs, from where he snapped his fingers in an authoritative manner. Fifty yards away, in the roadway outside the house, a uniformed constable snapped to attention, saluted and marched smartly away.
Dover appealed to MacGregor. ‘What the hell’s he up to now?’
MacGregor shook his head. He found Inspector Horton almost as big a puzzle as Dover did.
Inspector Horton came bouncing back and explained the situation with an energy and enthusiasm that made Dover feel quite sick. ‘The neighbours!’
‘The neighbours?’ asked MacGregor.
‘AH laid on, sergeant! Nothing for you big-wigs from Scotland Yard to do! They’re all ready and standing by their beds, awaiting your convenience.’
‘How many?’ demanded Dover, cutting through to the nub of the matter as he so often did.
‘Neighbours to interview?’ Inspector Horton grinned happily. ‘Three or four, that’s all. I’ve had my chaps going round doing a preliminary screening. Knew you wouldn’t want to be bothered with a lot of old fuddy-duddies who couldn’t see St Paul’s Cathedral at ten paces in bright sunlight.’
‘Too true!’ muttered Dover, the fingers of whose internal clock were already pointing to feeding time. He toyed with the idea of leaving the whole bloody business to Inspector Horton’s chaps but, reluctantly, decided against it. Flamborough Close wasn’t a thousand miles from Scotland Yard and senior Metropolitan police officers have ears like radio telescopes where dereliction of duty is concerned. ‘Well, come on!’ he said, seeing that Inspector Horton was just standing there. ‘Wheel ’em in!’
‘Actually,’ said Inspector Horton with an awkward chuckle, ‘I’ve fixed up for you to go and see them. It’s only a step,’ he added as he saw Dover’s jowls quiver, ‘and at least you’ll be able to sit down. There’s nothing in this house apart from a few old packing cases.’
Dover recognised the force of this logic. ‘We might even get the odd cup of tea,’ he observed as he made his way slowly and heavily down the stairs.
The first of Inspector Horton’s hawk-eyed witnesses lived in the house directly opposite ‘Osborne’. He was Major Gutty, aged ninety-five and the veteran of no less than three wars and thirty-odd years as a sales representative for a distillery. Confined nowadays to an armchair in the window of the front bedroom of his daughter’s house he was, as Inspector Horton was anxious to point out, in a uniquely privileged position to observe what went on across the road.
‘He’s got all his marbles, too,’ said Inspector Horton, staring down at the old man and speaking in a normally loud voice. ‘He’s just a touch hard of hearing, that’s all.’
Dover snorted sceptically and, deciding it would be socially unacceptable to evict the old buffer from his comfortable armchair, sportingly settled himself in the next best thing. If either MacGregor or Inspector Horton realised that Dover had chosen the commode, they had enough sense not to say so.
Inspector Horton planted himself in front of Major Gutty and gave him the nod. The old fellow sparked instantly into life, reminding his visitors of an old gramophone jerking out its hollow and tinny sounds. Ever since one of Inspector Horton’s chaps had called the previous day, Major Gutty had been rehearsing his evidence. He’d got it off pat now and only one thing was going to stop him from delivering it. Luckily for Major Gutty’s ambition to receive a congratulatory telegram from his sovereign, that didn’t happen.
‘The Bakers,’ he squeaked, ‘having lived at “Osborne”, Flamborough Close, for three years, vacated the premises some eighteen months ago. The house was put up for sale but, due to the uncertainties of the property market and – I’m afraid – the over-optimistic ideas of the Bakers, a buyer has not yet been found. Until the last ten days or so, the house stood vacant and, apart from the very occasional potential purchaser, unattended. Then we began
